Michigan is consolidating election precincts. Will voters face longer lines?

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Across Michigan, thousands of voters are getting new precincts — and in some cases new polling places — as officials redraw their maps to take advantage of a new state law that allows for more consolidation of precincts. 

The new law, which increased the maximum size of a precinct from 2,999 to 4,999 voters, is a consequence of recent voter-approved initiatives to expand access to early and absentee voting, which Michiganders have embraced. The law went into effect early last year, and some communities put changes into effect before the 2024 general election. Others, including Livonia in Wayne County, will run their newly consolidated precincts for the first time next week during local primaries. The shift could eventually save communities a lot of money, experts say. 

But realizing those savings will take some time, and voters could encounter challenges as they get reassigned to renumbered precincts, different precincts, or new polling places, especially if clerks don’t equip consolidated polling sites to handle a larger pool of voters.

Clerks aren’t required to consolidate precincts, but many have chosen to. Clinton Township in Macomb County, for instance, cut its number of precincts from 42 to 20, which will allow for an estimated 30% savings in wages. Livonia is down to 26 from 44, which it said would lead to a “smoother voting process on Election Day.” Communities from Algonac, in St. Clair County, to Walker, in Kent County, have also made cuts.

Grand Rapids expects cost savings from fewer precincts

Grand Rapids, the state’s second largest city, is going from 74 precincts to 59. City Clerk Joel Hondorp said the new requirement makes sense in an era and in a city where most voters are casting ballots absentee or during early voting. 

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By 2027, Hondorp said, the city’s voting machines will be a decade old and due for replacement, at an estimated cost of $10,000 to $15,000 per precinct. With fewer precincts, he said, the city will “save money in the long run on maintenance, on equipment, on all the stuff that goes with it.”

But Grand Rapids is taking some time with the transition. Hondorp said he didn’t want to risk making any changes before the 2024 general election that could confuse voters.

Hondorp said that in addition to redrawing precinct lines in a diversifying city, his staff had to send new voter information cards to nearly every voter in the city that show their new precinct or precinct number. The office also had to notify people whose regular polling place changed.

Effect of precinct consolidation on voter participation

Some people have warned, and still worry, that new precincts could disenfranchise some voters because their polling place might be farther away or otherwise less accessible. 

Kelsey Purdue, a Grand Rapids city commissioner who represents the city’s 3rd Ward, was the lone vote against the consolidation of precincts. Purdue represents significant Black and Latino populations in the city, and she told the Michigan Public radio station before the commission’s vote that she was worried about voters losing access to nearby polling places. In an April Facebook post, she said that consolidation could be “a step backward for voting access and participation.”

But an analysis by Michigan Public found that for most voters, the distance to their polling places would stay about the same or perhaps get a little shorter. Votebeat's own analysis confirmed that and did not find a strong correlation between the racial makeup of a precinct and the distance to its polling place under the approved reorganization.

Purdue did not respond to requests for comment from Votebeat.

John Willette is a Grand Rapids voter who wrote to several city officials citing similar concerns to Purdue’s. He told Votebeat that at a time when mistrust of elections runs high, he believed that the city was lax in communicating with voters about the consolidation, and the reasons behind it.

The city’s explanation that the consolidation was an expected consequence of voter-backed measures in 2018 and 2022 to allow no-excuse absentee voting and early in-person voting “felt dismissive” toward voters who may not draw the connection between today’s changes and things they voted for years ago.

Risks of consolidating precincts and polling places

Precincts serve mainly as an administrative unit for election officials to group a set of voters based on where they live and assign them the correct ballots. How they are grouped may not mean much to the voters themselves, said Nate Persily, a professor at Stanford Law School who has studied how new voting methods have shifted behavior. 

The bigger concern is the movement of polling places, which can often house multiple precincts.

“When you move polling places, there are some people who will not vote,” Persily said. To avoid that, he said, election officials must be sensitive to the burdens that administrative changes put on voters. 

That’s why Michigan’s law largely delegated the actual drawing of the new lines to clerks, who are “best suited to make informed decisions about consolidation and … would not make decisions leading to long lines or other obstacles to the voting process,” according to a bill analysis from the Senate Fiscal Agency in 2023. 

When not done well, consolidation of precincts and polling places can lead to longer lines. Since the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision that removed longstanding federal oversight of election rule changes in states that historically discriminated against minorities, Georgia voters have often faced long lines. A 2020 investigation by Georgia Public Broadcasting and ProPublica found that polling places had been cut by roughly 10% since the decision, despite the state’s voter rolls growing by nearly two million people.

But Michigan cities aren’t facing that same level of growth — not even Grand Rapids, one of the state’s fastest-growing cities. And if larger precincts draw more voters, officials can mitigate waiting times by providing more places for people to check in, said Charles Stewart, director of MIT’s Election Lab.

Moving a polling place can lower a voter’s odds for casting a ballot, Stewart said, but research has not yet made clear whether absentee voting or other methods might help fill in that gap. He said it’s up to local clerks to examine voting patterns closely and make decisions about maps and resources that don’t create new barriers to voting in the name of cost savings.

“The danger, as I see it, is there may be places where the number of people voting early is relatively minor and clerks there will nonetheless take advantage of the law and close a few precincts,” Stewart said. “Then that polling place is not sufficient to handle the actual traffic on Election Day.”

In Grand Rapids, officials say they aren’t looking for cost savings upfront. 

“Our staff spent a lot of time going through and coming up with the best recommendations that could affect the fewest number of voters,” Hondorp said. “Now we have that, and in future elections when we’re purchasing equipment or paying for preventative maintenance, we’re already ahead.”

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org. Senior data editor Thomas Wilburn contributed to this report.